ergodox QMK firmware vs keyboard.io Kaleidoscope

There are a few things QMK is better at: stability, community knowledge, available keymaps. On the other hand, Kaleidoscope brings a few things too, which QMK does not have:

• Instead of a monolithic codebase, Kaleidoscope is a very small core, with lots of plugins. This is easier to extend, and easier to puzzle the pieces YOU need together.

• Some of the features shared by both are more flexible in Kaleidoscope:

One-shots can be chained, so you can do Alt, Ctrl, X, instead of Alt+Ctrl+X.

Tap-dance is a lot easier to work with.

You can have more than one Leader key.

Macros can have parts that work while the keyboard is idle.

MouseKeys are easier to tweak (including at runtime).

• There are features that QMK does not have:

Bi-directional communication with the host, which allows all kinds of reconfiguration, without compiling or flashing new firmware.

Magic combos.

A lot of LED effects.

A lot of stuff is doable with QMK, but the Kaleidoscope architecture is a lot easier to work with. And the bi-directional communication is something that QMK lacks, and is the biggest deal.

There are some other niceties, like being able to emulate an absolute mouse, meaning you can position the mouse to specific parts of the screen, no matter where the cursor has been before. Combined with the usual mouse keys, this is a very powerful way to control the rodent.